What’s Behind Noam Chomsky’s Obituary-Marring Epstein Friendship?
Among Chomsky’s American fans, however, he’s famous less for his pacifism than for his exposure of propaganda and the conniving high hats who churn it out. In blockbusters like Manufacturing Consent, The Myth of American Idealism, Necessary Illusions, Understanding Power, and How the World Works, Chomsky seems to speak from the ivory tower to show exactly how much contempt elites have for the public, and how they gas us up with lies.
Perhaps this rambunctious outsider-insider status—rather than the “two Chomskys” theory—explains how Chomsky and Epstein and others in their circle, including Steve Bannon, are connected. They’re all deeply embedded in elite institutions, from Harvard to MIT, Goldman Sachs to the Pentagon. And yet they’re also deeply cynical about their own cohort. To take just one extraordinary example: In one email exchange, Epstein drew out Chomsky on the Iran nuclear deal, only to forward Chomsky’s anti-Israel thoughts to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak with a note: “Thought you might find amusing.”
Chomsky, for his part, especially loved to hate what he called the “imperial command” for holding themselves out as liberal exemplars while condescending to the rest of us. His villains were first depicted as WASPs, and later often as effete or feminized. (Recently in this role: Hillary Clinton.) Earlier in his career, Chomsky especially lit into Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential WASP theologian. While promoting his 1989 book Necessary Illusions, Chomsky used some of Niebuhr’s phrases and even assumed his voice: “Us smart guys—it’s our task to impose ‘necessary illusions’ and ‘emotionally potent oversimplifications’ to keep these poor simpletons on course.”